A federal judge refused a government bid Thursday to close an illegal Coachella Valley mobile home park on an Indian reservation, saying evicting its thousands of farmworker residents into the desert would cause "a major humanitarian crisis."

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen G. Larson issued a wide-ranging decision from the bench in which he placed the Desert Mobile Home Park under control of receiver Tom Flynn for two years, including a long list of duties from creating a rent collection and eviction process to ensuring things like sewer repair and stray-dog control.

His ruling also prohibited new or replacement renters at the park, where dogs roam on dusty streets and decrepit mobile homes often are without hot water or electricity. He also encouraged families who were safely able to leave to do so.

Relocation, he said, should proceed "with all deliberate speed," but in a way that assures order and safety.

"Neither the politics of fear nor the politics of hope will resolve this issue," he said in calling for cooperation by county, local and federal agencies to resolve the low-income housing issue. In the park, residents will have to take responsibility for fixing their homes, Larson said.

The 260-unit park land is owned by Harvey Duro Sr., a member of the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian tribe. Also called Duroville or Duros, it sits on the Torres-Martinez reservation near Thermal, about 30 miles east of Palm Springs.

Without alternative housing, "this court will not close Duroville," Larson said.

The judge said that while the park was indisputably unsafe, unhealthy and operating without a lease, no one could provide him with an exit plan for where its residents would go if he ordered it to shut down.

"The devil we know is better than the devil we don't," Larson said. Shutting the park down would create "one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the state."

And unlike the government-ordered evictions of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast during World War II, "There is no Manzanar (internment camp) for them to go to," Larson said.

The park's population is estimated at 2,000 but grows to 4,000 for the table grape harvest, which starts this month. About 1,000 children are estimated to live there, with about 400 attending three local schools.

"The shelter-in-place concept is alive and well in the federal courts," said attorney Chandra G. Spencer, who represented the park's residents. Larson's ruling will "keep this park in place until there's an alternative."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Leon Weidman argued before Larson's ruling that there was no way the rent generated at the park or other possible sources could bring in the more than $4.3 million he estimated it would take to bring the park into code.

"There is no business plan at all that anyone has provided that would supply that kind of money," Weidman said.

TAKING BIA TO TASK

Larson scored the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs for what he termed its poorly managed efforts to regulate the park as it grew from a few mobile homes in 1999 to about 260.

The BIA, which rejected Duroville's lease applications, said the park operated without a legal lease permit since it started. The government holds the land in trust for Duro.

Larson said that the BIA "showed an attitude that struck the court as almost adversarial," Larson said. It should have been helping Duro to get a lease and bring the park into code, but "the BIA actually attempted to obstruct Mr. Duro's efforts," Larson said.

U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said his office "respectfully disagrees" with the judge's comments.

"I don't think Mr. Duro wants me to blame other people," Duro attorney J. Scott Zundel said about the judge's comments on the BIA.

Larson also criticized Duro, who he said knew early on that the park was not operating legally and "purposely neglected his lease obligations."

Larson said a settlement agreement for a 2004 court case between the BIA and Duro was "hopelessly ambiguous and confusing." Larson vacated an earlier ruling that found Duro in breach of the agreement.

He ordered the BIA and Duro to meet after a six-month cooling-off period to renew efforts to get a U.S. Department of Interior lease for the park.

"It's an opportunity to reset, clean slate, start over," said Spencer, who represented the residents in the nonjury trial.

Duroville residents said they had been worrying for months that Larson might close the park, leaving them with no place to live.

"We're very happy," Catalina Ochoa said in Spanish on a dusty Duroville street with her sister and a friend Thursday afternoon. "This is what we've been praying to our Lord Jesus for, that they don't close this down."

Ochoa, 44, has lived at Duroville for three years with her husband and two sons. She and many other residents are Purépecha an indigenous people from the central Mexican state of Michoacán.

LONG LIST OF REPAIRS

Flynn, the receiver, has been working with the court for 14 months as a court-appointed temporary property manager. He said Larson's list of fixes for Duroville was long.

"Yes, I'm aware of what was there, but now it's a question of turning it into the action plan," he said. "Now there's clarity, that's the important thing. The judge took a Gordian knot of acts and omissions over the past 10 years and he cut the Gordian knot," Flynn said outside court.

Many of Duroville's trailers are decades old, and some residents said they never would have been able to move them out of the park.

"If we tried to move it to another trailer park, it would fall apart," Guadalupe González, 36, said in Spanish.

Her friend, Maria Torres, 36, said she didn't want to pull her three children out of nearby schools, where they were happy and had friends.

"It's not perfect here," Torres said in Spanish. "It doesn't have all the comforts. But it's our home."

Larson acknowledged that Duroville's residents are a mix of undocumented workers and lawful permanent residents, and many of the children are U.S. citizens.

"This is not a business. This is a village. Thousands of our fellow human beings call this park home," Larson said.

He said receiver-authorized inspections at the park for health, safety and code compliance at the park cannot be used for immigration proceedings.

San Bernardino Diocese Bishop Gerald Barnes said Larson's decision to keep Duroville open "spares thousands of people already living on limited means the terrible burden of being homeless during a depressed economy."

Mrozek, the U.S. attorney spokesman, said that while Larson did not grant the closure of the park sought by the government, he did find the operation was illegal, Duro was responsible for it and that it poses danger to its residents.

Mrozek said that closing Duroville "I think was outweighed by the humanitarian concerns he expressed at length during his ruling. At the end of the day we got nearly everything we wanted."

TROUBLED HISTORY

Larson, who had removed Duro from any management role for the park late last year and took away his $7,000 monthly rent share, restored $2,000 of the monthly payment on Thursday "in the interest of justice." He also said Duro and his family were exempt from eviction from the park.

Since his management role and allotment was cut, Duro said he thought the park should close.

Thursday's decision was the latest in a lengthy court battle over the park. A 2004 federal court settlement plan to fix the park failed. That led to the current lawsuit, which in 2008 produced a 90-day improvement plan, which also faltered, and the case wound up in a nonjury trial.

Reach Richard K. De Atley at rdeatley@PE.com or 951-368-9573

Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com